Grades

In Zanesville

<p>The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of In Zanesville is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar — a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that &quot;fudge&quot; can't be said with an English accent.</p><p>Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.</p><p>In time, their friendship is tested — by their families' claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them as if they were found objects, and by the first, startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.</p><p>With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America's innumerable Zanesvilles is a world of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant and unforgettable.</p><p><strong>2012 Alex Award Winner</strong></p>

<p>The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of In Zanesville is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar — a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that &quot;fudge&quot; can't be said with an English accent.</p><p>Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.</p><p>In time, their friendship is tested — by their families' claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them as if they were found objects, and by the first, startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.</p><p>With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America's innumerable Zanesvilles is a world of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant and unforgettable.</p><p><strong>2012 Alex Award Winner</strong></p>